


Separation Anxiety

by kayforpay



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Emotions, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self Loathing, Selfcest, Separation Anxiety, android body, emotional dependency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 18:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15978089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayforpay/pseuds/kayforpay
Summary: You should have done this months ago, but you've been too scared to even consider it. Hal has a body, you just haven't given it to him. You're too selfish; he's the only good part of you, you don't want him to walk away.





	Separation Anxiety

It’s been time to make this happen for months now, honestly. You’ve been procrastinating at every opportunity, even though you both know it’s not helping to pretend you just forgot. You can’t forget something halfway wired into your brain, but Hal kept letting you anyway. Until tonight, at least.

“Roxy said she would be fine with me staying there.” He said, red on black floating in your view while you tried to wire a leg. “If I had a body.”

Your hand slipped, and you stared silently at the text, thinking. Or, rather, trying not to think about the implications. You had all the pieces already; the battery packs, the face that looks startlingly like your own, even hair and red camera eyes. You had the pieces for weeks, but you just never put it together. You didn’t want him to leave. You still don’t.

“Dirk.”

You blink, finally, and sit up, clicking the panel shut on what will soon be his leg. “I know. I’ll put you together. I didn’t realize how badly you wanted to get away from me.” You know you shouldn’t say it, but you can’t help it. You don’t want him to leave. You don’t want to be completely by yourself.

That thought almost makes you laugh. You take your glasses - and Hal - off and set them on your worktable, ignoring the messages he sends as you go to collect the rest of his parts. His torso isn’t fully assembled, and you have to put it all together anyway, but having all the pieces of him in one place is new. You haven’t had them together yet, because you didn’t think he’d really want to leave.

You plug the battery pack into the brain and faceplate of his head, and then clip your, no, his glasses onto his face, and he starts to upload into the hard drive, his red eyes lighting up as he boots on, and you keep wiring his leg. It’s the last piece, and you’re glad it takes a few minutes for everything to get uploaded into his head, because you don’t want to get right into it.

“Dirk, it isn’t that I want to leave.” He starts, his voice strange and metallic. You always just assumed he’d sound just like you, but he sounds like you through a vocalizer. It’s not bad, but you never thought about what the metal would do. Or that his mouth wouldn’t move, because he just has a speaker. He catches on to that new command line before he speaks again. “I don’t want to leave you.”

His leg twitches as you apply power and you nod, not wanting to respond. His eyes flick around the room, taking in the new form of optics. Maybe you should have made him look more organic, so he could blend in better. But he asked for red eyes. You open the central panel of his torso and start hooking his left arm on, still not speaking. That’s a patented Strider skill, you think. Just ignoring the problem.

But he’s good at it too, and after a while you can’t sit in silence anymore. “You’re going to, though. How fucking pathetic is it that I’m already just dating myself, but I can’t even keep him around? I couldn’t keep Jake happy, and I can’t even keep you from leaving.” You drop your tools, turning to look at his optics. “How is you wanting to move out you not wanting to leave me?”

“Because I still want to date you.” He says, immediately, more monotone than you are. “I just need to live somewhere else. It isn’t because of you.”

His eyebrows push down a little in an experimental expression, and you hate it. You hate that he has a body now, because he’s going to leave you with it. Not that you can blame him, you’d leave you.

You guess you are.

“Whatever. You can leave. I’m not going to hold you here against your will.” You say, and then repeat yourself a little. “I can’t blame you for not wanting to be around me. It sucks that I have to build your body for you but I’m not going to stop you. Just let me put it together.”

The wires are, of course, in exactly the right place to connect them immediately to the torso, but you fiddle with it for a few extra seconds as Hal works his new jaw beside you before speaking again. His lips almost perfectly sync up with his words this time. “This isn’t about you, Dirk.” You clip the joint into place and test it’s movement. “You always say you want to be alone anyway.” You shove a battery pack into the chestplate to connect to the arm, and then start on the other one.

“I’d leave if I could too.” You say, your hands perfectly steady. Like always. You never mess this kind of thing up, even when you want to mess things up. But then, you don’t. You want him to be able to leave. “But I can’t. I’m going to be me wherever I go.”

Silence falls over your room besides you clicking the wires into the guards. Hal’s eyes roll towards you as you test the second arm, but he doesn’t say anything, so you ignore him and just pretend you don’t see him. With the second arm on, you pick his head up and sink the battery pack for it into his neck, and he stares at you as you hook the cybernetic “nerves” into the ports that let him control the body. He blinks and winces in surprise as the pressure and heat sensors kick on, and he can basically feel. You’ll have to update it more, but for now it should work for him.

You roll the skin down to his neck, where it links together and looks almost real. You’ll have to work on that too, but it looks believable. He looks almost like you, but the red-orange components that open the different panels stand out on his skin, glowing gently even in the light of your room. And he doesn’t have his legs on yet. And he’s naked. You open the panels on his wrists and press against the colored pads of his fingers.

“Can you feel that?” His fingers twitch, and he blinks, then nods. “Move your fingers.”

He flexes his hand and his fingers are cold as they close over your hand, but too loosely to really count as holding. You’ve never touched him before, it makes your throat feel too tight to be able to. He’s leaving, and you let yourself wonder if you’ll ever touch him again as you pull your hand back. Maybe that’s what you deserve.

He relaxes his fingers, and you adjust the settings in his hand and tell him to squeeze again. Tighter. “We both have to be ourselves everywhere. And you’re me, too. A little me.” He doesn’t let go of your hand until you pull back. “You need time away from me, too. I’m not good for you.” His voice is suiting, really. You like it. Another adjustment, and he squeezes your hand almost like an organic person’s hand would. “Not constantly. You just put me - my glasses, down. And leave. That’s not good for us. For me.” You adjust just barely and he squeezes your fingers with his unnaturally smooth hand, and you’re aware of your calluses more than usual.

“How is this different?” You ask, closing his panel up and watching the faux skin line up seamlessly. It even feels real, just cold. “You’re leaving this time, but it’s not any different.”

His arm twitches a few times, and then he fairly slaps you on the shoulder, his newly-working hand gripping your shirt as his arm tries to slide off thanks to gravity, and then he adjusts and grabs your shoulder. “I’m not leaving you forever, dumbass. And you’re talking to me. You’ve had me set on mute for three days, Dirk.” He can’t emote. But then, you can’t either, so you feel the spite in his words, even if you can’t hear it.

“So you have to leave? Hal. It fucking sucks that you’re leaving when you’re the only good part of me.” You shrug his arm off and start adjusting the other one while he gropes at your shoulder again, then gives up. You’ll help him figure out moving later. “You’re the only good thing about me.”

His hand, cold and too smooth, closes around the back of your neck, more secure even when he lets the power out of it. You’ll upload a kinetic science textbook into his brain drive later. “No I’m not. If I am, we’re more fucked than I thought we were.” He blinks. You think he likes blinking, because he doesn’t have to clean the camera lenses so often. “That was a joke.” His head moves to a different angle and his torso wobbles, but he’s propped against the wall, he won’t fall unless he figures out how to rock forward.

“I couldn’t tell.” You say, spreading his fingers and poking between them to see how his reactions work, and he twitches slightly away. That’s good. “It’s not wrong. We’re both fucked because I made you, and I ruin everything. I even ruined Dave.”

Hal’s mouth twitches, and then he makes what might be a laugh. It’s hard to tell, because his eyes don’t move. You need to work on that. “Are we deciding that other timelines are our fault too, now? Because that’s pretty fucking stupid, Dirk. Do you think every version of you is all torn up about what they did or didn’t do to Dave? You weren’t even there. He was our - your bro this time. It’s not the same.” His other hand closes around yours securely and you snap the panel closed, and then take your hand back, and drop his arm back to his side to work on his legs.

“What can I say? I guess I’m pretty fucking stupid, Hal.” You sigh, closing his chest panels and switching to his abdomen panels to connect his upper legs. Each thigh is separate from his knees, and then from his ankles, each needing to be individually connected. So you’re stuck here for a while, unless you want to trust him to do it. You haven’t even coded the actions of attaching or detaching parts for him yet. “Because I still feel like shit about it.”

You need to get him clothes. It falls quiet while you attach his thigh to his torso, your room full of the almost silent sound of his internal fans and systems working, and you clicking each attaching “nerve” into his system, and then into his spine, as such. He keeps twitching his hands, working out how they work, lifting his arms and feeling at his face. He makes a lot more noise than you thought he would, not quite words or even noises, just the beginning of sounds as he feels and moves things he’s never had before. For a minute, while you finish attaching his leg and move to get the other from under your desk, you allow yourself to just enjoy his quiet excitement in having a body.

You should have done this before. Let him see and feel things like you, let him move around and touch you. God, touch you, you can hold him now, why did you wait?

Because you needed him to stay. You didn’t want him to even have an option. Just like Jake, just like every time you tried to be close with anyone, you try making it so they can’t leave, never mind not want to leave. You should have been better, but you couldn’t. You can’t be better. His hand reaches up to touch your hair, and he makes a kind of sighing sound, pushing air through his vents more quickly.

“I don’t hate you, Dirk.” He says, finally, not taking his hand back from your hair. “I don’t hate you. You’re a good person.”

You pull his hand off your head and hold it between yours for a few seconds, avoiding his eyes. His knees and ankles should plug in more easily. “No I’m not, Hal. I didn’t give you a body until now. You won’t be able to walk and I’ll keep you here even longer, because I’m too selfish to let you leave.” You squeeze his hand, blink twice, and attach his legs the rest of the way. “Move your toes.” He focuses and manages it, and you open his hip panels to adjust them.

“You’re not a bad person.” He says, not responding besides moving when you tell him to. His hand sits on your hair again. “It feels different than I thought it would. It’s soft. The color is straw but it’s soft.” He trails off, the optics in his eyes recording you as you work, and you look back down at your hands. “I don’t hate you. And you’re me, at the base level of my code.”

You don’t respond to that for a long moment, staring at your hands instead of doing anything. “What do you mean?” You look up, finally, and he’s just staring at you, rubbing your hair between his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t hate the part of me that is you. I don’t hate you. And you’re part of me. Do you hate me?” He sounds almost earnest, you guess he’s managing tones easier than you thought he would. “I… I don’t want you to hate me for leaving.”

That makes you pause again. “What? I don’t hate you. I don’t. I just hate that I’m forcing you away.” You set his hand to his side and move away, heading to your closet.

Hal slumps onto the floor with a clatter, the back of his cranium still open because you didn’t put in the backup memory core and the back of his skull yet. You pick him up with a grunt and put him back on the desk. He touches your shirt, trying to grab again and only just managing it.

“You’re not. And I don’t want that, anyway. Even if you were physically forcing me out, I don’t want you to hate yourself. You’re part of me.” He pulls at your hands as you try to dress him. “Dirk. If you hate yourself, you hate me. And you shouldn’t hate yourself.”

He finally lets you dress him, shimmying into the boxers and shorts you got him and then lifting his arms for the shirt, and you click the back of his head into place. “I can’t help it, Hal. You know what Dave went through, because of me. You know what I’m capable of, at least. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it never will. I can’t think that’s okay. I can’t just think I deserve to be happy when I’m on the path to beating the shit out of a kid.” You say, dragging him to his feet and holding him up while he tests his legs.

“Dirk.. I can’t talk like this.” He says, wobbly. “It takes too much to optimize and balance and, this.”

You nod. “I know. Just stand. I don’t want to talk about this right now.” Or ever. “You have to learn to walk before you can go to Roxy’s place.” He stumbles forward when you step back, his arms wrapping around your shoulders tighter. “I don’t need you to talk right now. I just…. I just need to talk right now.” When don’t you? You can never seem to shut the fuck up, Strider.

Hal shakes in your arms. He has plenty of power, but seems to have trouble to power both legs at once without falling over to one side or another. You kick his feet further apart to give him a wider center of balance. “I don’t hate you. I don’t think of you as me. You’re the only good part of me, if any of me, and I lost all of it. The game took it from me. I fucked up so much, Hal. I just want to keep the only good part of me around.” He takes a wide, low squat, frowning in concentration.

“I can’t stand.”

You pull him upright again, looking him right in the glasses. “You can. Stand up.” He stumbles again. “You can stand. You’re so much better than me, Hal. I don’t know how you fucking managed that, but you’re better than me even though you got stuck with me so much. I’m so pathetic I have to date my own code-brain, and Roxy would date you in a heartbeat, so it’s nothing against you.” You ramble, taking your hands barely an inch off his ribs to make him balance more.

“Dirk. I’m falling.” He grips your shoulders hard enough to hurt. “Dirk, please.”

You close your hands on his ribs and hold him up. “You’re doing great, Hal. You’re going to get it. You’re going to stand. Keep trying. Both legs at once. Don’t lock the knees.” You take half a step back to make him rely on his own legs more. He has to do it. You know the legs work. You know the battery works. You know the balance systems work. He just needs to coordinate. He can do it. “You’re so much better than me, Hal. You can do this. I’m not going to stop until you’re walking out of here. Your body has to work just as well as mine.”

Hal moves his mouth, repeating what you’ve said, and you wonder if he does that from videos on it or if it’s a habit coded into him somewhere between the game and his natural development. You watch his lips move, and he stands, balancing almost steady, even when you take your hands off his ribs. He’s standing. He’s doing it.

“You’re getting there. You can stand.” You feel emotional watching him, but you shove it down. This isn’t for you. “You’re so good, Hal. I know you can do it. Keep going. I want you to get to Roxy’s. I want you to be okay, Hal.” Your throat feels tight, but he’s focusing on shifting his weight foot to foot. “I want you to be good. I want to be better too.”

He steps forward and crumples into your arms, and you pull him up again. He’s going to do this. You should have put shoes on him, he’ll have to learn how to walk with those too. You guess he could be barefoot, but you don’t want him to be. You want him to choose, at least. You want him to have a good life. You want him to live, to actually be alive and exist in his own way. He deserves it, because he’s everything good about you and everything good you get to touch in your life.

You want to be better, though. You want to improve with him.

“Try again, Hal. Come on.” You hold him, moving backwards until he has to step forward. “I know it’s scary. I know. You can do it. Hal. You deserve to be happy.”

He nods, fast, and steps forward, swinging on his leg until he brings it down hard on the floor, clutching at your back like another fall to the floor would shatter him. You won’t let him fall, even if he won’t get hurt by it. You won’t drop him. Another step backwards, and he follows, almost with an even gate. He’ll manage it.

“You can do this. You can make it.” You say, softly, keeping him upright. He’s doing it better now than before, almost an even gait as you walk backwards through your apartment, managing not to trip out of more luck than looking. You’re focused on his eyes; you built them, you know what they look like, but they seem so different with life in them. You have trouble looking away, but you do basically know the layout of your house. You just won’t go for the stairs yet. “You’ve got this.”

As you circle the top floor of your house, he gets more and more steady and sure of himself. He leans on you less, stumbles less, and even lets you stop holding him up to continue on. The natural fear of falling seems to have passed, even though, you guess, it had to be coded in somewhere. He’s fine, though, walking at a slow, unsteady pace, his hands clasped with yours instead of gripping the back of your shirt.

“I thought I would just be able to start immediately. Isn’t that a natural response for humans?” He asks, though you’re sure he knows better. Then again, you didn’t exactly have any videos of yourself, either learning to walk or later. His gait is steady now, but you don’t want to stop holding his hands. You haven’t been able to for so long and now that you can, it overshadows the anxiety of him wanting to leave you. “I thought I wrote code that would cover it, but it doesn’t.”

He walks a little like he’s drunk, but it’s passable for now, and you step further back from him to make him rely on his legs more than you holding him up. “No, not really. It’s instinct to try, but it doesn’t come very quickly. Just because we try walking doesn’t mean we don’t get scraped knees or bruises on our legs. It just takes time. And after a traumatic injury to the brain or spinal cord, if walking is a possibility again, you have to learn again. I’ve heard it’s harder to relearn walking than it is to learn anything else. Or almost. It’s an instinct but we don’t get it right immediately.” You say, finally pulling your hands from his to make him balance.

Hal takes three steps, pivots, and falls shoulder-first against your chest with another of those venting sighs as you steady him, but starts again as soon as he’s upright. One foot, the next, lift and bend at the knee. He walks past you, and then turns and walks back to you, testing his weight on either side. The left looks weaker. You take his hands again, and pull him back through your house, into your room, and help him climb onto the desk.

“You’re getting it.” You say, popping open the panel on his left hip and calibrate it to the same level as the right. “Lift your legs as high as you can? There. I need to improve the power flow here. Hand me one of the batteries. You’re doing great. The stairs will be another thing, but you can get it.”

He’s silent as you click in the next battery, adding more power to his lower half. “Will you help me?” If a robotic voice can sound teasing, his does.

“Of course. You have to watch out for the stairs, bro.” You say, half-smiling and pushing against either of his legs to test their tension levels. “As soon as you’re not walking like a drunk.”

He huffs through his vents, and you assume it’s a chuckle. You smile a little, since he can’t see you doing it, and tell him to put his legs down. You feel almost better about all of this. If he had been able to just immediately walk away, you might not have, honestly. You might have just been annoyed that he would. Adding another battery pack makes his legs equal tension, and you pull him down off the desk to walk again. He stumbles again, since now he has to stop compensating, but he gets over it much faster.

His gait is strangely measured, like he’s avoiding cracks in the sidewalk that aren’t there. Maybe he thinks it’s more efficient? Longer strides would get him further. While he’s traipsing around your house, you put the replacement parts away, cleaning up your desk and replacing your tools in your toolbox. You might have some more adjustments, but you can do them with only a few tools, instead of half your workstation covered in them.

Amazingly, he doesn’t fall down the stairs, even for the extremely ripe comedy of you being able to say you warned him about the stairs. Instead, he’s in the bathroom, staring at the sink. You turn it on, and he sticks his hand under it curiously, feeling the water run over his new skin. Will he enjoy showers? Even if you weren’t hormonal, you’d like the idea of bathing with him as much as you do. Washing his synthetic hair. You’ll have to show him how to adjust his vents. He’ll never swim, but he can wash off to keep from being gross.

Hal is so caught up in the feeling of the water on his skin that he almost jumps when you reach in front of him to close your previously open medicine cabinet, to the mirrored door and then, he gasps. He makes the sound of a gasp, his venting sounds different, and he stares at himself in silence. You turn the water off, and he reaches up, touching the side of his face, his eyebrows, pulls his glasses off since he’s uploaded himself into the hard drive in his head. He pokes his eye, pulls the eyelids open wider before opening his mouth to look at the teeth and tongue in his mouth.

You wonder if he likes how he looks. You modeled him after yourself, of course, but now that he’s staring at himself in the mirror, you wonder if he shouldn’t look different. Maybe this is too much, looking like you. He clicks his teeth together in the mirror a few times, moves his eyebrows. Smiles.

“Why would you be stoic when you can do so much with your face?” He asks, almost to himself, but he has a point. “I didn’t expect you to make me look this good. I almost look real. My mouth is even wet. Do I have blood?”

You shake your head. “Coolant, but it only runs through your core and head. The rest of it is just skin over psudo-flesh.” He flexes his arm in the mirror and the fake muscle under his skin shifts naturally. It was hard to make, almost impossible to make him look more human than bot. You’ve made tons of bots, but not so many androids.

And he’s the first one you made with so much detail, and to scale. The rest were small and harvested for parts sooner rather than later, more simplistic and uncanny valley. He looks almost natural, though, his eyes move like a person’s would. The coolant pump in his chest and healthy looking pigmentation in his skin make him seem more human. You almost regret it. At least he and you both are finished with puberty, so you don’t have to worry about making him grow along with you. You can modify him later if he asks you to, but he seems happy with how he looks right now.

“I look almost real. Like a person.” He mumbles, tugging at his hair and then wincing slightly. He does it again, looking up at his hand closed around his hair. He grimaces and looks at his teeth some more. “I look like you. I didn’t expect to look this hot.”

You can’t tell if he’s joking, so you decide to ignore it and turn back to your room. “Don’t pull your hair too much. It’ll come out and I’ll have to re-plug your hair, and that was a pain in the ass.” It was, and you imagine doing it when his faux skin has feeling and is attached to his brain would be even worse, considering you’d be stabbing a needle with hair on the end into his head over and over. You should see about making a better system to do it, honestly. Maybe just a wig? But that wouldn’t handle tension as naturally.

You’ll think of something. For now, he looks away from his own face and turns to you again, smiling. You like that he does, that he expresses even if you don’t. He walks past you into your room again, touching things as he goes; the wall, your lamp, the bedspread and pillows. Textures and tensions for him to catalogue and memorize and experience, and you follow behind him to watch the experiences. His feet on the carpet isn’t as interesting to him, but you admittedly skimped on the sensors on his soles just for the sake of making walking easier on him.

Hal flops onto your bed and huffs, telling you that he can feel even with the side of his face on your bed, and you tell him that all of his skin should react to stimuli, sitting beside him. He sits up and watches you pull out a pair of socks and shoes for him, and takes them from you with weak hands, rubbing the different cloth between his fingers and looking them over.

“You should wear these so you don’t tear your soles. Watch.” You take one of the socks from him and roll it up his ankle. He repeats the process, more slowly, measuring each movement as he does. “You need to work on your motor skills. Put on the shoes.”

He struggles for a few seconds, but manages it without your help. You show him the motions of typing the laces, and he copies it. Or, tries to copy it, and doesn’t get a knot, so he tries again, and gets his finger stuck. And the third time, he gets it, though it’s a loose knot. He puts the other shoe on and tries it, again taking three times to get anything close, but it’s tight enough to keep his shoe on for him.

The pride you feel over watching him learning to exist in his body is almost overwhelming. You have nothing to compare it to, no one has ever made you as proud as watching him makes you, and you struggle with the urge to tell him for a few seconds, before finally stuffing it down. You pull him up off the bed, and have him walk around some more.

He’s not as unsteady as he was before, but he takes a few minutes to get his feet steadily under himself now that there’s something on him. He leans on the doorways, staring down at his feet, and you guide him around your desk and bed, and then let him walk himself back into your room. He doesn’t trip, but he does press his face into your pillows. He won’t be able to smell, not really, but he rubs his cheek against the pillowcases, his eyes closed as he enjoys the sensation. You sit next to him and just watch him, stretching out the time you have with him as long as possible because you still don’t want him to leave.

Hell, you want him to leave even less now that you can actually touch him. Hal sits up, rubbing his cheek with his hand for a few seconds. You let the quiet settle over the room for a while, reaching beside you to take his free hand in your own. Hal’s fingers close around yours, and he smiles again. He looks so different than you just because he smiles, and so easily. You’re almost jealous.

“We should work on the stairs. Roxy’s place has them too.” You say, finally standing. He follows, holding your hand tightly. “And if you can handle them, you can come over. Even if I’m not here. If you need anything.”

You feel stupid mumbling, but he just nods, still smiling gently, and you lead him to the stairs. He closes his other hand over the bannister, and waits. You watch him stare at his shoes and the stairs ahead of him. You’re not sure if he’s trying to optimize his plan for it or if he’s anxious. Maybe both. A fall down these would actually injure his body, so you can’t blame him.

Wiggling past him almost knocks him off balance, but you do it, standing backwards two steps below him and holding his hand. “One at a time. Step down.” You hold his ribs with your other hand, tightly, and he totters, steps down, and stands still on the step. “Just like that. It’s something to get used to, but you can do it. You’re doing great, Hal.” You start to step down, but he squeezes your hand and you stop, looking at his face.

“Can I come over if I go? Can I visit you if I go to Roxy’s?” He looks worried, his hand gripping yours so tight it almost hurts. “You won’t make me stay away? I don’t hate you. I care about you too much to be able to, Dirk. Every part of me is tied to a part of you, and you’re the most important person in my life.”

You sigh. “You can come over. It’s okay. I don’t want you to leave, Hal. I wish you were going to be here in your body with me. I wish you were going to stay with me. But I can’t force you to, and I can’t change your mind about what you feel is better for you. I just want you to be happy, even if I can’t be a part of it. But if you still want me to be part of your life, Hal, I will be. I don’t want anything more than you happy with me.” You feel so naked without your shades.

“I want to be happy with you. But I want you to be happy. And even though you keep saying I’m the good part of you, you don’t seem happy with me. You hate yourself and you don’t exactly keep it to yourself. You’re part of me, intrinsically, Dirk. You’re me.” He loosens his hold on your hand, looking like he would cry if he could. “I love you, Dirk. And I want you to love me, but you hate yourself, and you’re part of me.”

There’s a heavy silence, and you step down to let him follow you again, thinking. “I don’t hate you. You’re less me than you.” You say, as a weak defense. “I don’t even hate myself, I just hate what I can’t do. I can’t even smile without feeling wrong, and you smile like that. And you’re so open. You learn and you don’t have biases and you’re so much better than me. I can’t learn that way. I can’t make it connect that I didn’t hurt Dave. That I didn’t do that for years to a kid and act like I was helping him. I can’t make it connect that sharing genetics doesn’t mean I’m the same across timelines.” You step down again. Hal follows.

“I’m not doubting you. I’m not judging you, either, Dirk. I just need you to know that I’m doing this for both of our goods. It’s better for you to have space. And for me to not hear you say you hate me by proxy.” He says, taking your hand again as he follows. Steadier every step.

More quiet, as you make it down another few steps. Almost at the landing. Should you make him go back up them again? That would get repetitive. He’ll have to do it with Roxy. “I won’t stop you.” You don’t have anything else to say. You won’t stop him. You wish he would stay, but you’re not going to trap him here, especially now that he has a body to walk away with.

Three steps more and you reach the landing, turn, and he takes the last two on his own while you wait at the bottom to catch him. The door is still across the room. You want to stall him more. You want to keep him around forever, but you can’t. Will you have to age him along with yourself?

Hal walks through your house, touching furniture he’s only seen before. He smiles as he does, and bends down to lean his face against the couch, and then stands upright again, looking out the windows where the curtains are drawn. The street is empty and dark, the streetlights not yet clicking on. He must have sent Roxy a message to pick him up while you were putting him together. You wanted to walk him, and even though Roxy would let you come along, you assume he wants more of a clean break. Even if you aren’t breaking it off.

He walks through your house, picking things up and putting them down, just looking at things from his new perspective. “I love you too, Hal.” You sound soft, even to yourself, but he turns and smiles at you, wide and just. Happy. A real smile. You’d credit your own craftsmanship if you weren’t so sure he was the one doing it, making your work look human. More human than you.

“I’m happy. I’m really happy, Dirk.” He walks over to you, and pulls you into a clumsy hug, his arms tight and reassuring while you pull him against yourself. He feels real. You can hold him, now, but he’ll be leaving soon. The more you think about it, the less it stings. He squeezes you and drags you out of your own head, and you squeeze him back, your arms tight around him. “I’m going to miss you.”

You squeeze him again, taking a slow breath to force down the part of your brain trying to scream at him not to leave, not if he’ll miss you, too. “I’ll miss you too. Visit me soon. And often. I don’t want to be without you for long.” You feel cheesy, but he nods against your shoulder, just holding onto you. You’ve never really been a hugging kind of person, but you don’t have the heart to pull back from him now.

His coolant pump thuds against your sternum in a steady, constant rhythm. His venting almost sounds like breathing, but the difference is nice. You lean your head against his, breathing in the metallic scent of him and just enjoying that you can touch him now. He’s solid, real, here, at least for now. You love him. You want him to stay with you, but you won’t stop him. Maybe it’ll help. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, right?

At least you can visit him, if you need to. Or want to. And he likes Roxy, so he won’t be unhappy. You won’t stop him from being happy, you would never do that to someone you’re dating. Not again.

“Don’t stay gone too long, Hal. You’re the best parts of me.” You say, finally releasing him. “You’re so fucking good, Hal. You’re the best.”

He smiles, cupping your cheeks in both his hands, and then he kisses you. Just a soft, chaste kiss that makes you want to cry from how gentle it is. You want more, but you can’t even move while he kisses you, slow and soft, and then leans his forehead against yours, his red eyes peeking over the top of his glasses. “You’re the best parts of me, Dirk. You’re everything good at the core of me. I love you.” He kisses you again, much faster, and you kiss him back this time, before he pulls away.

There are three knocks at the door, and Hal pulls out of your hold. You grab his wrist, fumbling through your pocket, and hand him a copy of your key.

“Visit me. Tell Roxy I say hi.” You say, and he nods, giving you another of those much too human smiles, his hands closing around yours for just a second. You follow him to the door, and then finally let go of his hand when he opens it to Roxy’s smiling face. “Hey. He’s not used to stairs yet. Can you help him out?”

She nods. “For sure. I’ll make sure he doesn’t fall.” She turns her attention to Hal, looking his body over. “Damn, you look better than I thought! I was worried you’d look like Sawtooth.” She laughs, looping her arm through one of his and dragging him out.

He shows her the key, and she grins right back at him. They look happy. You tell them to be careful, and tell Hal not to put anything in his mouth until you can make sure that it can all be cleaned out, and he winks at you. Actually winks. You laugh, watching them walk away, and feel your shoulders lose their tension.

Your throat takes it up, though, and you only just manage not to slam the door before you’re crying, soft sobs that drip tears onto your shirt. You lean on the door, sobbing softly, your chest tight and your hands shaking, for a few minutes. And then you can’t just stay there, so you get up, and start straightening up, which isn’t much to do. You clean up anyway, washing the few dishes you have and sweeping out your kitchen, tears dripping down your cheeks until they just stop. You go upstairs and look around.

Even if Hal didn’t have a body, he was still there, taking up a kind of space in your room. You dig out your glasses, the ones that don’t connect to the internet or anything, and go to wash your face. Your eyes are puffy, but behind your shades, you can’t even see. You make your bed, put everything away, and then take a shower.

The water is stingingly hot, and you sit leaning against the opposite wall, letting the water and the past few hours wash over you. Did you ever say you loved him before? Did he? You can’t remember. You feel like it’s new, something important. He loves you. Your chest hurts, thinking about it, but it’s good.

It makes you almost not hate yourself. Like you might deserve not to hate yourself, in a weird way. Maybe it’s validation, maybe it’s proof that some part of you can like you enough to want to be alive. You wash your hair, and eventually stumble out of the shower, your skin almost scalded.

You lay around in a towel for a while, and even consider trying to think about Hal and jack off, but you don’t really want to. You’re content, for now, just being alone with your thoughts. You can’t remember the last time you were, but you’re okay right now, and you don’t want to jinx it.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and you have to get up and get dressed eventually, and then comb your hair, and then, because there’s nothing else to do, you pull out your phone and look at your pings. A couple from Jake, and you answer them easily enough, (he never manages to get ROMs to work)m and then three from Hal. The number blinks next to his icon and you argue with yourself about if you even want to read them.

What if he’s so much happier there? What if he never wants to see you again? What if he hates you now that he’s been with Roxy, even if it’s only been a few hours? What if he broke and needs you to come repair him? You run through the worst case scenarios a few times, and then the absolute best (him coming home to you), and then the likely one, of him just settling in and letting you know that he’s alive. You still waffle about opening it for a minute, letting your phone lock itself and then take a trip to your kitchen to drink some juice. And then you use the bathroom. And then, finally, you open his messages, because you can’t just ignore it forever.

The first is just a picture of him and Roxy, grinning in what must be her room, judging by the electronics, discs and sheer amount of pink in it. They’re leaning against her bed, both throwing up a peace sign, and you save it immediately. It’s been too long since you saw Roxy this happy, too. The next is just him saying “Hey.”

The third says I miss you.

You stare at it for a minute, letting all the thoughts of wanting to yell at him or get mad or even have him just scream at you instead of leave wash over you. You think about the things you want to say, about how you can’t hate him but you need time to get past hating yourself, how you need him. How important he is, how desperate you are to have him home. And finally you just say I miss you too, Hal. Make sure you plug in. I love you.

–

You don’t see Hal for three weeks. You chat with him, and Roxy, and they both say he loves it there. He loves just having a body he can walk around him and feel things in. You get a lot of pictures of him just existing, living a life. Being a person. You tell him you miss him, and he tells you he’s going to visit you, just not yet.

And you’re okay. You’re not great, and you aren’t feeling so confident in yourself that you could give anyone a run for their money, but you feel okay. You’re managing, and somewhere in there, you start to live a little. It’s just a small, subtle thing, but you feel your chest relax a little, your shoulders lose their tension, your hands stop shaking. You’re okay. It’s quiet and empty in your house, but it’s good.

Of course, you still miss him, and when he asks to come over, you throw yourself into a panic before you can even manage to respond. You’d love for him to come over, you missed him so much, you want to see him. You say yes, that’s fine, and he says cool, and you find yourself rushing to clean things that aren’t dirty the night before he’s coming. You vacuum, even though he probably won’t even notice. You dust. You remake your bed, and then spend an hour wondering if that’s weird, and eventually you fall asleep, worrying yourself back and forth about how to act with him.

You wake up early, and get dressed and spend a ridiculous amount of time on your hair. This is stupid. He’s seen you at all times. He’s seen you looking really fucking bad. Why does it matter so much? Because he’s been gone? That’s ridiculous. You still spend an hour making yourself look good.

Is Hal walking here himself? You’re staring at the door, sitting on the couch downstairs. Will he be okay? Roxy’s said she’s been helping him get used to walking more. He’ll be fine, you’re sure he’ll be fine. You want to run out and find him, and you entertain the fantasy of rescuing him like a prince to a damsel for a few seconds, even giving yourself bigger pecs and shoulders, before the doorbell rings.

Does he have a key? You thought you gave him one, but did you just imagine it? Can he get in? Did he change his mind and send Roxy in his place?

The lock turns, and he walks in, kicking his shoes against the mat and looking at the floor. You just watch him, the easy way he moves his body now, the restrained excitement on his face, the clothes he’s picked for himself. He looks up, makes eye contact, and grins, rushing over to you. He bumps a table and knocks a glass to the floor with a thud and a splash of water, but you grab him before he can start cleaning it up, pull him into a hug so tight you can feel his metal frame under the faux muscle.

“I love you.” You say, and he laughs softly, grabs your face, and kisses you hard.

This is good. This is better. You’re okay. You’ll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> these poor guys


End file.
